Like Carl Lewis at the Long Jump

I have a four-peat!

Today was my fourth consecutive AA meeting and my fourth or fifth day of sobriety. It depends on how you count: do I start on Saturday, the first day beginning at 12:00am where I didn't have a drink, or Friday, when I didn't have a drink after I woke up (my last drink was at somewhere around 3AM. Understandably I am a little fuzzy on the exact time)? For ease of counting, I may just call it four AA meetings and four days of sobriety.

My days are not the hard part. I spend them with my dad or my wife. I help Robert at the Jewish Home, walk with him, keep him company in a strange environment and run whatever errands he may need. Joycelyn and I watch TV, cook dinner (that's more her than me. You would understand if you ate a meal made by both of us as to why), and enjoy married life in a city as wonderful as New York. I attend my AA meeting in the evening. I watched the NBA Finals and enjoyed the game quite a lot.

I, generally, wasn't a daytime drinker. That was one of my innumerable excuses as to why I couldn't be an alcoholic. It is very hard to explain to someone without an addiction problem the rationalization process that goes on in your mind to convince yourself everything is OK, but the following may give you some insight.

I didn't get my first drink until the evening, so I didn't have a problem.
I didn't get "really" drunk every single day, so I didn't have a problem.
I didn't get hangovers all the time, so I didn't have a problem.
I didn't get as drunk as "real" alcoholics, so I didn't have a problem.
I didn't get blackout drunk all the time, so I didn't have a problem.
I didn't get into legal trouble, so I didn't have a problem.

I didn't get it.

Habits are hard to break and habits involving drugs are very hard to break. In New York City, a drink is never more than $1 and a couple of feet away. I'm very proud of what I have done and indescribably thankful to all that have helped me, but doesn't mean there won't be some times that are hard. I am an adult, and if I decide to drink, I can.

I must make the choice not to have a drink every minute of every day. Some days are harder than others and some minutes are harder than others. The last few hours, after the game ended, has been very hard for me. I even watched the post-game bullshit just to keep busy. This is because the hardest time for me is after Joycelyn has gone to sleep when I'm still home and not ready to go to sleep. I'd usually be three-quarters loaded by the time the NBA Championship was won. It's because I'm just here, essentially by myself, and wandering minds are dangerous. No one can watch over my shoulder 24-hours-a-day.

This is why every AA meeting I attend adds to my collection of phone numbers associated with first names and last initials. I get handed business cards with the personal cell phone numbers 60 minutes after being met by essentially a stranger. Some business cards have the person's name and the business they work for. I've had a card or two where the person's name is part of the business name like Meyers from Jacoby & Meyers. (This is alcoholics Anonymous, so NO I didn't meet Jacoby or Meyers! I would never out someone like that, but it's an example most can understand.)

I get a phone number and a name. And then I am told to call anytime. If I need to talk, if I am thinking about a drink, if I'm just lonely. It's for the dark times. I've been told some AAs spend as much of the day in meetings as they can for they feel safest there. It sounds strange to need to feel safe in this fashion, but AAs generally fear alcohol and what it will do to them if they slip. I face my fear every day when I visit Dad, but sometime those consequences seem distant and some booze would make the problems seem that much further away. Things seem so much easier when I'm drunk, despite how much harder they really are. All your cares are washed away as you make that horrible decision that, in reality, adds to those problems.

This post may have seemed to start out upbeat, and get progressively worse as I continued to write, but that is the furthest thing from the truth. When I started writing this post I really wanted a drink. I know I could have woken Joycelyn to keep me company, but I didn't need to. There is a reason this post actually got happier as it continued, despite sounding darker and darker:

Instead of fixing everything with a bottle, I made the choice to write about it.

Every word you have just read represents me choosing to type and not drink.

I don't want a drink anymore and that makes me happy. I think I'm going to go to bed now.

I didn't slip today, and I'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow.